Known plug contacts for plug connectors have a plug portion with an opening and a contact spring connected to the plug portion. A pin contact is inserted into the opening of the plug portion along an insertion direction. The contact spring exerts a contact force on the pin contact perpendicular to the insertion direction.
In the prior art, these known plug contacts have a material bridge connecting the plug contact to a carrier strip, which holds at least one plug contact. The plug contacts connected to the carrier strip are delivered in a folded state and loaded into automatic placement machines which provide the plug contacts automatically with electric conductors and/or insert them into plug connectors. There, the plug contacts receive the pin contacts in order to electrically connect the pin contacts to the electric conductors joined to the plug contacts.
The pin contacts must be held as reliably as possible in the plug contacts to maintain the electrical connection. There is an ongoing need to miniaturize plug connectors, as a result of which the plug contacts must also be reduced in size. However, ongoing reduction in size is made difficult due to the fact that the functional components of the plug contact, such as the contact spring, must still be accommodated on the plug portion and simultaneously must be able to apply the desired contact forces. Material thicknesses of metal sheets, from which the plug contacts and the carrier strips are generally punched out, are between 0.1 and 0.2 mm; despite this relatively thin sheet thickness, the plug contacts, produced for example from steel or phosphor bronze, must have the desired plug properties and contact forces.